Merry Christmas, New Vegas
by Cyprith
Summary: The Courier gives New Vegas Dean Domino for Christmas. Raul finds himself jealous.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Merry Christmas, New Vegas

Pairing: F!Courier/Raul, implied F!Courier/Dean Domino

Summary: The Courier gives New Vegas Dean Domino for Christmas. Raul finds himself jealous.

A/N: Just a quick little thing. It is what it is.

* * *

"Come to the Sierra Madre," the radio croons and Marilyn goes.

Raul's old enough to know better—it's a carrot on a stick, it's a pit waiting to swallow. Every bone in his body screams _trap, trap_ because when he left Mexico, even the cockroaches fled. There's no pre-war resort there, no shining beacon to the past.

But Marilyn smiles, all sharp teeth and charm when he worries. "A city built around a casino, Raul," she says. "If it's working, I want to know how."

She's a queen, now. She swears she'll drag New Vegas up from the ashes of its past. Already, crews work night and day—handsomely paid—rebuilding the city, reclaiming those buildings still standing.

"I'll be fine," she tells him, tapping the side of her head. "I'm bulletproof."

What can he do, but watch her go?

* * *

Three weeks later, nearly Christmas, she returns.

She drags a bag behind her down the street, bearing gifts. For Cass, she brings a bottle of bourbon, the first Raul's seen in two hundred years, maybe the last in the wastes. She brings Arcade a Gauss rifle, brings Boone a pair of diamond-studded sunglasses to see him laugh. She brings Veronica a woman with a face like a roadmap and smiles when they melt into each other like coming home.

For Raul, she brings back a pair of .357 revolvers like the ones he had as a kid.

For New Vegas, she brings Dean Domino.

All smiles and snide asides, the bastard trails through the Lucky 38 beside her, a casual hand on her back, fingers brushing her arms, moving with her like he knows her, like three weeks in a busted up old casino and he _earned _this.

Raul remembers him. Remembers tabloid headlines—a fist fight with Dean Martin in some long forgotten club. He says as much, watches with quiet, vicious pleasure as Domino's teeth clench hard enough to creak.

Marilyn laughs. "You have a legacy," she says, and Domino slips back into charming like putting on a suit.

Still, when she hugs Raul hello, he sees Domino's eyes narrow behind his glasses, cold and mean.

He grew up in Hidalgo; Raul knows how to spot a snake. Domino thinks he's dangerous, following Marilyn, planning and plotting. Wants to use her, probably. Smells the power on her and thinks he can charm it his way.

But three weeks in a busted up old casino—he doesn't know the first thing about the New Vegas queen. He'll only ever be as dangerous as she wants him to be.

So Raul smiles over her shoulder, watches Domino snarl—

Watches the cameras shifting in the ceiling, Yes Man following everything.

_Merry Christmas_, he thinks. _You won't last past the new year._

* * *

Domino does not return to the Lucky 38. Marilyn sets him up in the Tops, gets him the stage. She rewrites the radio—changes Mr. New Vegas to _Ms_.—plays music salvaged from wreckages wasteland-wide.

Between her and Tommy Torini, fifteen new singers hit the Top's grand stage. Marilyn puts them on her radio, too.

"New Vegas is waking up," she tells them. "It should sound like it. Too many jangling spurs and men in Roman skirts lately. I'm done wallowing in the past."

Raul catches himself wondering what Domino thinks of that—him, history's poster boy. He doesn't wonder long. Marilyn smiles at him over the radio, asks him to dance, and the thought crumbles.

"With these knees?" he asks. "Won't hear the music over my creaking."

Still, he dances. Hand pressed flat against her back, fingers twined in hers, they dance. He feels her heat like a wall, her laugh like a promise, fluttering against the hollow of his throat.

He hopes a little, wrapped up in her.

But later, Arcade tells him, she dances with Dean Domino, too.


	2. Chapter 2

Christmas comes to New Vegas like it hasn't since the war. Marilyn has pines shipped down from Jacobstown, sets them glowing in every casino. Her workers dismantle the gate between the Gomorrah and the Tops, build a central square there instead.

She unearths plastic trees from the basement of Camp Golf—located by some obscure shipping manifest House hoarded—and decorates her new stage with unwilting evergreen. More trees find her gates; one gets anchored to the King's roof. Fairy lights string the doors of every shop and casino from Freeside to the piles of broken bricks stacking up outside the city as it shakes off two hundred years of dust.

Strung with lights and pine-sap, December creeps onward. Ms. New Vegas plays every surviving Christmas song anyone can give her, and if Raul rewrites the programming to play Dean Martin's _Jingle Bells_ three times an hour, well, who can begrudge an old man his hobbies?

If Marilyn notices, she doesn't say.

Cass, on the other hand, does. "Christmas party at the Tops tonight," she says, hovering over his workbench. "You gonna sit up here and let Domino make eyes at her all night?"

"I'm an old man," he tells her, his eyes on his .357s. "What do I care?"

It's such a poor lie, Cass doesn't even do him the favor of pretending to believe it. She snorts, propping her hip on the edge of his workbench. "If you asked, Marilyn would jump you in a hot second. But you're not asking," she says, leaning down just enough to get in the way of his tools. "You wanna guess who _is_?"

Raul rescues a handful of screws from rolling off the edge of his bench and levels a glare at Cass strong enough to put her on her feet again. "Don't you have somewhere else to be, chica?"

Apparently, she does. But she leaves shaking her head, "Your loss."

* * *

That night, Marilyn walks into the kitchen wearing Benny's coat, the skin of her enemy cut to suit, and a black dress she brought back from Mexico.

Raul looks up from his work, hunched over his Christmas present, and cannot breathe. She smiles at him like a vision of the old world—hair done up in platinum curls, her mouth burn-blister red—and he's two hundred years away, young and human and still with so damn much to lose.

"What do you think?" she asks.

Raul's vision steadies. The heat mirage of past-over-present dissipates, leaving him old and lost and _hurting,_ every joint, every scar in his soul. This is his chance, he knows. If he's going to ask, it should be now.

But he can't. He _can't__. _He's not stealing cars anymore with a skip in his step, chasing after any pretty girl to half look his way. He's ancient and crumbling; regretful and so, so bitter. Marilyn forgets how bitter. Somehow, she looks at him—looks _into _him—and smiles at the wild fool he used to be.

Mouth dry at the look in her eyes, Raul swallows, shrugs, returns to the guns on his workbench.

"I'm sure that's a great idea, boss. Killing one of the most influential leaders on the strip and wearing his clothes like a trophy."

He regrets it—he doesn't—stealing glances at her face like sighting down a barrel. But Marilyn doesn't flinch.

"You're right," she says, and disappears into her room.

* * *

A half-hour later she steps out, and again, Raul's breath catches in his throat. Marilyn smiles at him across the hall, all sharp teeth and vicious angles. She wears the right side of her head sheared close, the scars Benny gave her poinsettia stark against her remaining wisps of silver.

Slowly, Raul stands, crosses the hall to her side.

He forgets just how much she's been damaged, too.

And he can't ask, not really. But he can try. "You wearing all your trophies tonight then, boss?"

Her smile softens. Her shoulders relax. Marilyn rests her remaining curls so gently against his shoulder, loops an arm through his.

"Now I am," she says. "You ready?"

For a moment, Raul thinks of Dean Domino, snake-eyed and hunting, dripping charm. But Marilyn looks up at him, eyes laughing, and the radio by his workbench begins to play _Jingle Bells _again.

Raul smiles. "You look beautiful, boss," he tells her. "Let's go."


End file.
